I realized that I had stopped in mid sentence once I looked back there at the blog. I had mentioned that I had called one of those disaster repair companies in to completely clean the house. First I had to get the o.k. from the cops because they still considered it a crime scene, which it was. And I couldn't stay there; I couldn't imagine the sight of walking by the blood stained carpet in the living room every morning before I went to work. The stain would be a constant reminder that Anna and Kate wouldn't be there any more. But it would also be all that's left of their physical presence left in my life.
I'd probably lose my mind by having imaginary conversations with the blood stain:
"Hey, honey, did we get confirmation on that cruise to Barbados yet?"
Silence.
"O.k., good. Anna, I really hope that you're really going to work hard to bring your science grade up this semester. We'll support you in anything you want to do, but there will be a lot of jobs out there in a few years for chemical engineers."
Stone silence.
"I know, I know. Music is your thing, you've got a beautiful voice. What? We gave you private voice lessons so that you could develop your voice, and audition for musicals and other stuff."
Silence.
Mom didn't want that stuff, I thought you wanted it."
Silence again.
"You're right. Maybe I should listen to you more often."
Just like talking with Wilson, the bloody volleyball.
So, the cops finally gave me clearance to gut the living room after about a month or two. I was staying in a hotel, avoiding the press, talking only to family and work occasionally while waiting for the CSI guys to suck the room for evidence. For all the magic the guys work on TV, these guys in Oakland County really didn't tell me much that I couldn't have figured out from the crime scene or my family's twisted bodies in the morgue.
"Mr. Grey, from what we can tell, the intruder broke into the home around 2 a.m. using the back door. It was just pulled aside and the lock broken."
Note to self: buy better lock when getting insurance to fix back door.
"After the intruder entered the house, that's when your dogs were alerted and barked. The older one, Shadow, is that correct?" I nodded. "Yes, Shadow attacked the intruder. We found the dog in the back yard with its neck broken and we can reasonably conclude that occurred before your family was killed. The younger dog, Izzy, apparently continued to bark. Your next door neighbors awoke and noticed the terrified tone of its bark, at least that's what they said."
"Yeah, Jim and Nancy own two dogs themselves," I said, "they'd recognize a frightened dog when they heard one. We had foxes in our yards last summer."
"Back to the events that night: forensics determined that your wife was the first to be killed. We can guess that she was awakened by the sound of the dogs and came downstairs. She must have had a baseball bat with her because we found one on the floor with her prints on the handle and a big palm print on the hitting end. My guess is that she took a big swing and he stopped it with his hand."
"Is it possible to break somebody's hand like that?"
"Oh sure, but after the damage that was done to your family, I doubt the intruder did it one-handed. Judging by the damage to your wife's throat, the intruder is right handed, and we believe the murder weapon to be some kind of garden claw."
"Why a garden claw?" I ask. I remember the thought in my mind at that time was, why a garden claw? Did this guy have something against gardeners? Did one of them kill his parents with hedge trimmers while he hid under the bed when he was kid?
"Because there are three relatively parallel slashes across her neck consistent with a tool like this." He shows me a standard photo of a garden claw, one you could buy at any hardware store. It would be hard to track one single purchase down.
"So where did all of her blood go?" I asked.
"Frankly, Mr. Grey, we don't know. Some of the blood ended up on her night gown, some of it ended up on the floor, and DNA tests are still preliminary, but we believe that they're a match for your wife's blood."
"Who else's blood would it be?" I remember asking this dumb question.
"Well, the intruder's, for one. Your wife did come downstairs with a baseball bat and got at least one swing off. Who knows how many more? My guess is from the lack of splatter blood patterns on furniture and carpets, except for your wife's death blow, I would guess she didn't make hard enough contact to break the skin."
At this point, I was listening to this jerk-off talking about my family in all of his clinically detached terms, anything to keep himself from reacting emotionally to this awful murder. I've already had my emotional moments at home in private, but I didn't know if I could hold it together when he talked about Anna.
"Could you just give me a summary of Anna's death? I don't need the gruesome details like you did with Kate's death."
"Sure, Mr. Grey. I'm so sorry. Sometimes, families want to know every detail about the crime, and sometimes, they don't. You struck me as one who did. I should have asked first."
"It's o.k. Can we get this over with?" I could feel tears well in my eyes, but not just tears, rage. Boiling fucking rage against the animal who did this.
"In short, your daughter came to the defense of your wife and was knocked against the stair bannister. After the intruder killed your wife, he then went and killed your daughter. And then your younger dog."
This was when the detective stepped in, Detective Abernathy.
"Mr. Grey, right now, we're working on all possible leads. This has been a frustrating case with all of the press, and kooks now calling in false leads. However, we're keeping certain information from the press to quell an even greater panic. What I tell you cannot leave this room, you understand?"
The metro Detroit area has been in a panic mode because this appears to be now the 5th and 6th murders where the victims have been drained of blood. The Free Press dubbed him or her the Vampire Killer. Real original.
"From what we can tell, this so-called Vampire Killer has not just killed 6 people in the Metro area. He has been killing homeless people in all three counties for the past six months, ever since spring began and they left the shelters. We think that the reason he's stopped killing homeless people and started on your regular everyday person is because the homeless are terrified. They won't stay outside at night. Day time is fine, but the killings occur only at night, and since the homeless have moved inside to shelters, our Vampire Killer has run out of victims."
"How many has he killed so far?" I ask. I'm sure that I don't want to know the answer.
"With your family counted, it's up to 118."
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